Adapting to the changing nature of project information

Have you received a project status update via Twitter yet? In this “age of effortless information,” as described by founder of mashable.com Peter Cashmore, is the nature of project information changing and do we need to adapt?

We recently became aware of an executive general manager in a large company who insists on daily ‘status’ tweets from their direct reports. This in turn has resulted in project managers from key projects tweeting status updates to their direct reports.

The past five to 10 years have seen strong take up in enterprise project management software, corporate instant messenger and desktop conferencing. More recently, social media is beginning to make its presence felt in the working environment.

If you do a review of online discussions at the moment there seems little doubt that social media is beginning to play a significant role in projects. On average there appears to be overwhelming support for the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Support is for the capability of these tools not necessary these brands per se.

In her survey Social Media in a Project Environment, Elizabeth Harrin found that 36% of survey respondents now use social media tools for communicating with their project team, while 24% reported that they communicate with the project stakeholders using these tools. Furthermore, 27% of respondents reported using them for project status updates.

However, as Ty Kiisel notes in ‘The Influence of Social Media on Project Management’: “No CEO is going to spend any money on a tool that simply incorporates a Twitter or Facebook feed into its project management solution. Business leaders don’t want to fund an employee’s ability to waste time talking about what they are going to eat for lunch or where they might be spending their weekend holiday. The conversations need to be about the work and projects that team members have in common.”

Project information is changing. Information exchange is increasing in frequency and decreasing in size. Do we have the structure to support such a change? Do we have the understanding and the norms by which project teams can operate effectively such an environment?

To find out how to adapt to the changing nature of project information, download Chris Dwyer’s whitepaper at Core Consulting > Adapting to the changing nature of project information